Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Yesterday afternoon I took all four girls to the grocery store for essentials to get our pantry stocked back up. It is never ideal to bring all four with me on a trip to the grocery store, but they were pretty good and my sanity was actually holding up pretty well as we pulled into the checkout line. I joked with the cashier about barely having room for food in the cart due to all the space that the girls were taking up and then got started unloading.

About that time one of my manager friends Sam came over and asked if the girls wanted a balloon. My first instinct was NO... but because they had been so good I gave in and sent the littles off with her to select four nifty helium filled balloons. Truth be told I was probably just buying myself a few minutes of peace in the check-out line. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. Ahhhh.....

For the rest of the day the balloons did nothing but cause trouble!

On the way out of the store it was difficult to hold hands while also holding on to the string of the balloons and we had to stop to re-group several times on the way to the car.

In the car I kept yelling, "Keep those things behind my seat.... Do Not let them drift into the front of the vehicle" over and over again while they hit each other with them and pulled each other's strings.

Then, of course, the unthinkable happened- Sarah's balloon "broke" while I was unloading groceries. She was completely devastated, as were all her sisters.

The three remaining balloons became impossibly tangled to the point where I had to cut them and retie the clip that prevented them from flying away several times.... oh, how I wanted to just let them go!!

The only saving grace of the balloons was the quick science lesson we had in the car on the way home: helium gas inside is lighter than air= they float. I think they got the gist of it. They were even asking if helium is what makes swimmies (or floaties or waterwings, whatever you call them) help people float in water.

Fast forward to tonight:

On the way home from Family Night Supper at church I was talking with the girls about what is on our schedule for tomorrow. Someone in the back piped up, "Don't we need some groceries mom?" I told them we had all the groceries we could use for now and they all started to whine. Then Maggie and Kate both started begging at the same time, "Please, mommy.... our balloons are getting really low. We need to go back to the grocery store." That's when Ella added, "Yeah, Sarah's busted and mine is almost out of gasoline."

Here's hoping the balloons are a very, very rare treat at our local grocer or I'll never be able to sneak away to the store by myself again!!

"Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind, don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there aren't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection."

-Mark Twain

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